New York, today

Forum poster Tele Zephyr admitted he regularly uses online dictionaries to boost his vocabulary during internet debates.
"Sure, I check words at dictionary.com," he said. "Sometimes posters use really big words so to keep up I just check the meaning and blast them back with some big word myself. It helps me keep my online cred."

Along with several online dictionaries, Zephyr's bookmarks were also loaded with online encyclopedias and a thesaurus.
"At thesaurus.com I can type in a simple word and get a whole lot of alternative big words that, like, not many people know," the dance game absorbed geek said squinting through finger-greasy spectacles. "I sound pretty smart that way and people respect my language ability. They're like,'don't argue with that Zephyr guy' or something."

Zephyr said wikipedia.org was one of his favorite sources of information for winning arguments on the net.
"Yeah, you don't need to know a thing about a subject, and you just check wiki and suddenly you're an expert. You can like debate anything with anyone." He has also been getting into online translators to help his language credibility. Perennial nerd and internet debater, Zephyr has recently been engaging people in various languages like Japanese.
"You type what you want to say into babelfish, and it comes out in Nihongo," the freshman Japanese student said, using the Japanese word for 'Japanese'. "No one can tell you're not, like, near native or something."

Tele Zephyr says he chose his online name to sound slightly exotic and foreign.
"You can't tell where I'm from which kind of adds to the mystique," the red head white trash whose real name is Dufus Block said. "Everyone's like 'that Zephyr guy knows his shit about foreign stuff so maybe he's like half-Russian or half-Japanese' or something."

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